Press conference by Christopher Black, lawyer from Toronto, member of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic.

16.06.2001.

“It is absolutely clear that no evidence can be provided in proceedings against Slobodan Milosevic and that keeping him in custody is exclusively politically motivated,” said Christopher Black, adding that, according to information he gathered, 250 political prisoners, mostly members of the Left, were in Serbian jails.

In Black’s view, demands for Milosevic’s extradition to The Hague derive from a simple fact that the West is eager to get rid of the guilt for unprecedented bombing of Yugoslavia. By sentencing Milosevic before a court that can hardly be called a court of law, the United States and other Western countries, as Black put it, want to wash their hands of the war they wagged contrary to all international norms.

Black said he had just returned from Africa, where the people he had spoken to were astonished by the fact that the symbol of resistance to NATO aggression was in jail. Referring to the work of the International Crime Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Black said that unlike other courts, this “quasi-court” presumed people guilty, rather than innocent. It would not be logical, said Black, to expect it to be “fair” when one bears in mind the way it was financed. All trials held before the court were typical political cases and one should not look forward to a fair trial to Milosevic, or Karadzic and Mladic should they be extradited to The Hague, concluded Black.